Introductions: 3 new writers

We would like to introduce our new writers [Rachel Fee], [Greg Jacobs], and [Jacob Nahin]. They will be focusing on software reviews and tutorials in response to the daily requests for posts that don’t require that you be an electrical engineer to understand.

The Hack a Day community is growing very fast and we are happy to be a valued source of information to our readers.

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65 thoughts on “Introductions: 3 new writers”

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Ben: Fair is fair, we can’t _make_ HaD to go back to what it used to be. (With ‘we’ being the group that was here from the start and doesn’t want the beginners articles to show up in our daily read.) What we can do is tell Hackaday that if they make it too difficult to get to the juicy die-hard hacks or if they leave them out altogether, we’ll be going to read the site a lot less: we’ll look for the hacks ourselves or look at (or start!) another website. If they implement a way to filter out what we don’t want to see and keep the frequency of the die-hard hacks the same, I for one won’t complain and stay on the site.

Ow, btw, I’m not against software hacks if they’re worth their weight, ofcourse. It’s the rest of the post that made me worried, as well as the tags it has…

WTF! are you saying hackaday is owned by mahalo? as in the same mahalo that scams the DMCA to generate free advertising for itself by claiming to own copyrights on other peoples videos? even blocking videos linked to from articles on hackaday? fuck this; I think I’d rather go wade through all the crap over at instructables. It’s starting to reek of shame and money here.

Hackaday appeals to many different ‘disciplines’ in the hacking world. I’ve been reading Hackaday for years and there is no doubt that the content has changed since the early years. I think that this is indicative of the ever changing hardware (and software!) that is available to the every man (look at TI’s ongoing campaign, the event of Arduino). As knowledge filters in to all of us, the incredible seems mundane.

I’m all about the hardware, I always have been. While I’m not overly excited to see an already floundering content list get watered down even further, I’m very interested to see what I can learn. Good luck to the new writers.

I say the content is floundering because it doesn’t conform to my ideal of a ‘hack’. But it does conform to some one’s ideal. Horses for courses.

There is most certainly a divide between the old readers who appreciated the old content and the newer readers who have a different opinion of what a ‘hack’ is.

nexus: It isn’t really the costs of hosting, it is paying people and keeping them motivated to keep the site’s content fresh and bring in new readers. I know a few of the writers and they are great guys who are enthusiastic about the site and the hacking community. They certainly don’t do it for the money, but I can’t imagine they would have enough bloggers and mass appeal if someone wasn’t getting paid. And yes, you could easily get your money back with well placed ads, but I doubt the guy who actually owns Hackaday cares about just getting his money back or the integrity of the site. He wants to micro-manage the site and make money (just an educated guess).

sprite_tm: I didn’t mean to sound like I was advocating that you shouldn’t make suggestions. That is what the writers want. They want to hear how to make the site better for their base. They understand why the core readers are important and certainly want to keep them around. I just meant to make an argument against people making purely emotional appeals as to the inevitable loss of the identity of the site. It isn’t fair to judge the writers for things that are completely out of their control. Hackaday has gone through a lot of changes behind the scenes that people don’t really see. On a personal note, you definitely contribute some of the best content and it would be a shame to lose you in the community so I am glad you are sticking around :)

N.B.
For anyone interested in the actual organizational structure of hackaday, you should do some research or contact Caleb. I believe it is currently run my Mark Jeffrey of Mahalo.

My $0.02, I’ve been a hackaday reader for a few years and I love the content. Certain things do seem a little overboard (arduino’s, led’s, nixies), but that’s what people like to see. HaD staff doesn’t pick those projects out of bias, but because so many are submitted and I’m sure they DO get lots of requests for software hacks and hardware reviews. — (I’m hoping of course that they mean electronics hardware and not PC hardware.)

I think this could go either way, so welcome aboard new writers. Let’s see what you’ve got!

@bobdole: Couldn’t have said it better myself. This is exactly how I feel. I remember finding this site years ago and being so excited to see the new hacks posted every day. In the past couple years it’s just been getting more and more diluted and I’m having to filter a lot of stuff out of my RSS feed to find the interesting bits.

Bring on a bunch of ‘how to use Windows’ articles that cover things that any competent ‘hacker’ or just plain ‘user’ should be able to figure out with some experimentation as I’m sure all of us long-term users have been doing forever when we use our computers, and I’m going to be looking for some other site that can bring me the cool hacks again.

If I have to put up with stuff like that voice recognition stuff, I think I’m going to stop reading hack a day. I get enough of that kind of everyday knowledge from lifehacker, and it’s ten times the lenght of everything else that’s posted. I was really taken aback when that article popped up in my RSS reader, and it took a moment before I could believe it was really from hack a day.
Honestly, which hack a day reader needs that stuff?!

I find it quite amusing that a lot of users are comparing the site to diluting and turning into lifehacker, who have linked the post now.
Could be a sign that hackaday will be the next lifehacker? I hope not.

You know, it seems ridiculous, but at some point I’d like to see some sort of internet etiquette thing somewhere… maybe hack that into software and destroy completely free speech. Or maybe to make those nuts happy that need to say such negative things, hack a filter that one can turn on so you don’t have to wade through all the unproductive comments.